February 19, 2008

Kiran Karnik was the President of NASSCOM from 2001 until last month, when he handed over the reins to Som Mittal (blog on Som coming soon as I also spoke to him). He has steered the Indian technology and services industry through some good and bad times over the past half a dozen years and it’s always a pleasure being able to get some time with him as he has to be one of the busiest people at the NASSCOM conference. The fact that he just handed over the presidency did not seem to lighten his diary commitments! Hilary Robertson and me eventually managed to pin him down and in a quiet corner of the Hyatt hotel we had a chat about the past few years heading NASSCOM and some of his thoughts on future issues for India.

Kiran opened our conversation by highlighting that when he came on board, there was considerable turmoil across the entire global IT industry: “It’s been six really exciting years for the industry in India. In some ways if I wanted to summarise the main challenges for India then I could say that one of them happened just four days before I started in my post; I started as NASSCOM president on September 15th 2001. 9/11 created a lot of uncertainty in the world at large and at the same time there was a post-2000 slowdown in IT spending as well as the threat of a recession in the USA, which is the largest market for Indian technology firms.” As if this wasn’t enough, Kiran found a major public relations issue about to take place in the USA: “Almost immediately after this period was the US presidential election where outsourcing and offshoring became a major policy issue, and all this when I was new in the job!”

Kiran feels that the industry did an incredible job. Indian companies managed to adapt and flourish when all of these general economic factors were against them. He said: “It’s great to do well in the good times, but the fact that the industry has continued to grow despite some of these challenges has demonstrated the maturity of the Indian industry and its ability to be nimble and to adapt to changing circumstances.”

I asked Kiran about Indian government support for NASSCOM and he offered glowing praise, except for the most recent budget: “The sense of the industry, until quite recently, was that the government has been very supportive, but the last budget contained a number of negatives for us. There were two or three things that are specific to the industry, but also some more general things. The first thing is really like the dog that didn’t bark. There was no extension of the STPI scheme [Software Technology Parks of India, a scheme to boost IT exports]. Then, almost like rubbing salt into the wound, was the announcement of a minimum alternative tax – so we might have expected an extension of the tax holiday, but we actually got a new tax instead! Then, there was a new tax on leased accommodation. Many companies in our industry prefer to lease offices, so this new service tax hits us as we are the industry that is the biggest leaser of commercial space.”

Though these tax measures came along like London buses (several all at once, rather than evenly spaced) Kiran was keen to stress that – in general – the government has worked well with NASSCOM: “I don’t want to sound too negative. By and large the government policy has been positive, except for these particular comments that are all related to the last budget. On the amendments to the IT Act that are forthcoming, this has been really very positive. In fact, it has worked in an excellent way as the government has worked with industry to frame the amendments to the act. It’s a huge step forward and will help us a great deal.” Kiran is referring to a major update to the main piece of Indian technology legislation, the IT Act of 2000. The new additions bring the legislation up to date and introduce more protection for data and criminal offences for cybercrime such as phishing.

Talent is one of the key issues driving NASSCOM at present. Kiran explained his views on sourcing new graduates for the industry: “There is a serious concern about graduates not being suitable for work. Some of us feel that we don’t just need more investment in the education system, what we need is actually structural reform. Without that reform you have a system based on the old state-supported system, which tends to be non-market-responsive. You could change pedagogy or courses over a period of 5 or 10 years, but this is a problem right now, as we really need our education system to respond to what the market needs. We need technical skills, we need soft skills, and we need communication skills. I wouldn’t say that they are not responding, but they are not responding quickly enough.”

The call for education reform is a strong one. I can see many supporters of the NASSCOM voice, but then as always in this kind of debate, there are many who would prefer the status quo to remain – because that’s how it has always been. Especially those who think the private sector should have little or no link to education. Kiran gave me his thoughts on private sector companies setting up their own academies. He said: “The good thing is that most people also see the need for rapid reform. It’s a good thing that some of the larger firms are setting up their own academies and training people, but the small companies must rely on the product of the universities, so you can see a problem developing where smaller companies will have no access to suitable people. In this industry the small of today grows into the big of tomorrow and we need to nurture them, otherwise we are sacrificing our own future.”

Moving forward, Kiran see a number of key issues for NASSCOM to focus on, the first being talent and education as he just discussed. He adds: “The second is the very positive issue of the domestic market. It is growing very quickly and that is good for us, but there are initiatives we can get involved in to help that further, such as encouraging the spread of broadband. Third is innovation. We are convinced that we need to move towards that as the next stage. I don’t think it is just about additional sophistication, R&D, or high-end products, but at a very base level you can change something at the bottom of the pyramid. It can be a change in pricing, or a change in the business model.”

Of course data security has figured high on the NASSCOM agenda for the past couple of years and Kiran mentions this as a final point: “Finally, the systems of the future will depend a great deal more on data security and intellectual property rights. As you begin to innovate more you need more protection for your IP. You need data security, especially if we are processing even more domestic data. I’d actually like to broaden the agenda of data security into calling it a trust initiative – this is something really high in the NASSCOM agenda now.”

I like that final touch, getting away from hard industry terms such as data security and intellectual property and just calling it trust. India has built a great deal of trust thanks to the efforts of NASSCOM over (almost) two decades now. Kiran can depart for new challenges with a real sense of achievement, having steered the Indian technology and service industry along a steady course in some very choppy waters.

February 18, 2008

I left my hotel on Saturday and got a taxi to the airport. As I sat and relaxed in the back, listening to the calming voice of Morrissey on my iPod, I got a shock when the driver pulled up on a very busy stretch of road and started waving at me.

I eventually understood that there was some problem with the car and I needed to get out. I quickly realised that we had a puncture. So I wasn’t too worried about it as I thought it would not be long before we are on the way. I even asked the driver if I could help with the wheel change, but he couldn’t really understand me and by the time I was asking he was already under the car with a jack.

He had the entire job done in less than 5 minutes flat. This driver shouldn’t be driving a cab, he should be working for the RAC…

After some initial concern about my hotel car not showing up and then having to find a taxi in the street, then getting a puncture, I was pleased to still get to the airport with plenty of time to spare!

It’s incredible how technology can invade our lives without us even realising it. I’ve been having several conversations at this NASSCOM with Kathy Dite about the British rock group Radiohead. She had asked me about a British band and she couldn’t remember the name, so Hilary Robertson and me spent ages calling out the names of possible bands – then, in the end, Kathy remembered anyway. The point is that she had never even heard of Radiohead, until she was educated in their particular style of music by her kids. However, when I mentioned that they made their most recent album ‘In Rainbows’ available to download off the Internet for any price you choose to pay she had an immediate recall: “oh, so you mean THAT Radiohead!”

So ‘OK Computer’ had never moved Kathy to tears, but the fact that Radiohead had used the Internet as a new distribution platform for their music had registered, even with someone who is not a fan. As a side note, the project seems to been hugely successful. Even though many fans downloaded the album choosing to pay nothing, many fans chose to pay. In fact, the average was something like £4 per download. Even taking into account the hosting and bandwidth costs, that is a lot more per unit than the band could hope to get from a traditional record company.

My final day at NASSCOM this year was a whirlwind and I have masses of new content to write up for the blog this week, both on my British Airways flight home to London and once I get home. I did not even manage to attend a single session on Friday. Apologies to the speakers – including Bernard – as I missed them all. I had meetings lined up with people on the sidelines of the conference all day. I met some really interesting people from Steria, PA Consulting, Datamonitor, NeoIT, KPMG, and I also had the opportunity to interview the new president of NASSCOM Som Mittal as well as the most recent president, Kiran Karnik.

My last meeting of the day was with Kiran, and Hilary Robertson sat in to listen to us chat together. We left the meeting with various NASSCOM people chasing after Kiran – the buses were leaving from the hotel destined for the Royal West India Turf Club. Dinner was going to be served at a racetrack in the middle of downtown Mumbai and we were all running a bit late.

Fortunately, we did all manage to catch a bus. Steria CEO, Francois Enaud, noted that it was the first time he had ever been on a bus where the driver is sealed off from the passengers – you had to open a door to get into the passenger section of the bus. I heard someone say that it was to protect the driver from violent passengers, which might well be the case in London, but the NASSCOM crowd is pretty good natured.

The bus was trapped entering the turf club, we had entered at a slight angle and the driver could not get the bus through the gate. So just as we thought we had arrived, we all had to sit there in the bus as it went backwards and forwards, each time with just a few centimetres of clearance on either side. We got in eventually and watched the ‘Bollywood Dreams’ show laid on for the NASSCOM delegates before all heading back to the Hyatt later for a final chat with everyone.

As I was heading off to NASSCOM this year I was thinking to myself how much I look forward to the experience. So many people I know are there each year it is a very social event, but it seems to be all over so remarkably fast. I might have to attend the summer event in Bangalore this year, just to tide me over to February 2009!

February 16, 2008

I may have left it late but I certainly got a good look at Mumbai today, thanks to my host Sailesh Patel. Sailesh arrived at 11.00 on the dot and took me out in his daughter’s black little number (a Tata) decorated with pink flowery motives and the word “Angels” on the sides. What this must have done to my image in India, I dare not think! Still, it got us noticed and nobody ran into us, even though some seemed to come very close (that traffic again!).

Born and bred in Mumbai, Sailesh was a mine of useful information and made sure that I got to see all the major sights: Municipal Corporation Building, Victoria Terminus (or Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, as it is now called), General Post Office, Gateway of India, Bombay University, Prince of Wales Museum and more.

And my impression? Well, being a quiet and retiring sort of chap, Mumbai is really too hectic for me: too much traffic, too many people and too much noise. But give me the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower any time. We had a sneaky look inside the original part and I could just imagine myself sipping tea in one of the lounges overlooking the Gateway of India and the Arabian Sea. Next year, maybe?

A final word of thanks to Sailesh for looking after me so well today. While being driven around, I found out that, amongst other things, he owns a small offshoring company (Cielmac PVT Ltd) delivering medical transcription work for a US firm and a number of UK private practices. There is just no escaping this great industry of ours!

Here is a picture of the impressive Victoria Terminus

Sailesh outside the Taj Mahal Palace

Mumbai University

Time to check out and to start the journey back home. Put the kettle on over there!

Well, that’s it: the NASSCOM conference is over for another year! The official proceedings ended with a forward-looking valedictory session entitled “Taking India to the next level of global leadership”. Then it was off to the Royal Western India Turf Club Race Course in Mahalakshmi for the “Bollywood Dreams” entertainment and buffet dinner. The show was lively and colourful as you will see from the pictures below.

This is actually the first time I am stepping out of the hotel since my arrival in the country early Monday morning, and my first sight of Mumbai. First impression? The traffic is terrifying! I am so pleased I don’t have to drive. I will be having a proper look at the area today. My Oxford neighbours’ cousin, Sailesh Patel, who lives in Mumbai, has kindly offered to take me round for a little sightseeing.

February 15, 2008

I attended the session Creating Sustainable Change through Organizational Alignment and managing an Increasingly Diverse Workforce this afternoon where Bernard O'Driscoll (former Group HR Services Director, Lloyds TSB) was speaking.

Bernard ran through the case study of the outsourcing of HR services by Lloyds TSB, covering the drivers, choice of partner, split of responsibilities in the new delivery model and ending with a few lessons learned. The one that seems obvious but is often forgotten about was: building and sustaining confidence in the partnership is key to successful implementation.

Mark has all the details on the blog already about the party last night. I will only add that not only were the awards given to very impressive people and companies such as Cisco and BA, but the routines between each one were pure Bollywood. I loved the laser show and the two artists dropping down on trapezes. With the city as a backdrop and lovely WARM weather with no rain, it was perfect.

I got to meet lots of ex-colleagues who I first met when IIS Infotech was acquired. They are working across the India market for companies like CSC, Sapient and Capgemini but all still have a real soft spot for Xansa/ Steria.

Today we had the former Lloyds TSB Group HR Services Director speaking on a panel. The whole session was very interactive and our groundbreaking HRO service with the bank was front and centre.

Some more headlines for you all:

The developed western world's skill base is aging. India and other developing countries have a much younger base, with more than 50% under 25!

Indian CEO's rate their HR function as their most important resource.

80% of the UK workforce in 2020 is already in a job somewhere now.

60% of primary school pupils will end up in jobs not yet created.

So, lots of employee engagement required in multiple ways as the young net generation will connect to things very different from baby boomers like me.

You’re getting the scene now… It’s 01.15am and I am starting to pen my blog for today – or yesterday when you read it. Tiredness is starting to have an effect... be patient, tonight’s is going to be shorter than yesterday’s dawn to dusk rambling.

So it’s Thursday morning, we started with McKinsey’s usual excellent breakfast briefing. Like last year it was on their 360 process benchmarking, now richly updated. I have a “paper” copy of their P360: Driving Operational Excellence paper and we have good connections with McKinsey who have been working on this for a couple of years now. I’ll just pick out a small number of highlights they mentioned:

Satisfaction from offshoring is rising …

But operational excellence is holding back the amount of value that can be delivered.

To the latter point, McKinsey flags that there can be up to 100% cost differentials between bad and good companies and productivity has a variance of around 30%. Size of provider does not correlate to operational excellence – but management focus is key.

AD/AM satisfaction followed a fairly constant 20:80 rule (dis-satisfied to satisfied). In BPO what interested me was that the basic services – data entry or basic voice showed a lower % of dis-satisfaction compared to higher value rules-based work. (It was probably easier to read that without the double negative… but you know what I mean.)

Better managed companies are also managing to reduce costs against rupee appreciation.

In looking at performance of AD/AM, McKinsey used a small number of metrics (attrition, utilisation, span of control and failure cost.) Using similar AM projects McKinsey showed a cost range of 30% (i.e good to bad), indication and opportunity to optimised operating models.

Mckinsey use their insightful research to suggest that up to 2 x value can be lost through poor operational performance, and they have a useful framework for breaking this down further into distinct competencies – but you need to see their research for more detail.

Next, Francois, John and Mukesh meet and spend time the leaders of NASSCOM – Som Mittal, President and later, Kiran Karnik, immediate past president.

Francois manages to pack another press interview in before his talk at 11.00. I expect Kathy will go into the detail, so suffice to say it was very good and I know Philippe has blogged on this already.

I wander back, bump into Edge from KPMG (not U2), who have also produced an interesting report for NASSCOM on KPO and Alex now at PA Consulting… at NASSCOM and on his honeymoon.

Move on to the evening… and the NASSCOM awards. People like John Chambers of Cisco and Willy Walsh of British Airways win top awards.

Bernard O’Driscoll is here – see his blog with Mark and we find we are fellow MBA alumni from the same B-School. We meet with Matthew Cule from M&Y Data – a company I visited a year back as a result of a trip to China organised by Amit Badami. I visited M&Y’s most northerly site, an hour north of Harbin. That’s on a par with Vladivostok – and I can vouch that in November it really is cold. Ice sculptures are a speciality there. It has a cosmopolitan feel to it being so close to the Russian border. There are a number of Chinese IT Parks and companies at NASSCOM this year seeking investments. One such organisation speaking is Beyondsoft which I also visited. They’re located in Beijing’s Z-Park.

Sally Robins and I meet some interesting people. Mohan, an IBM Fellow no less, whom we hope will stay in touch and the founder of Cybermedia - ditto. Unbelievably, I am re-introduced to my former boss, Brian, from about 10 years ago. He’s now running a company which undertakes diverse activities from investigating causes of major explosions and to creating large-scale models of Britain’s Parliament and development of authentic 17th Century gunpowder for a film re-enactment of the gunpowder plot. The latter was created in a little-known place called Spadeadam. Somewhere I am very familiar with as it’s close to my home city and heart of Britain’s once booming rocket industry (Blue Streak).

Kathy and I wend our way back and have drinks at back the Hyatt bar with friends and yet again it is the end of the day.

I got a text from Paul Morrison, who is a consultant at Alsbridge in London, asking where I was. When you are overseas and inside a large hotel or conference venue texting is an incredibly easy and cheap way to find people. Paul and I know each other, as we are both on the board of the UK National Outsourcing Association, but I wanted to talk to him wearing his Alsbridge hat so he could give me some observations on what he had seen at the NASSCOM show so far.

We sloped off to a corner of the media centre. I was keen to try getting Paul’s general observations on NASSCOM this year, as I had been searching for a cohesive theme myself. Usually at these industry events there is some uniting theme for the year, and it feels that as Indian IT matures, NASSCOM has adopted a more quiet and serious approach to getting business done – rather than the tub-thumping of the past, which was perhaps more fun to listen to.

Paul agreed with many of my views, but he gave me an excellent summary of some of the industry concerns and opportunities too. He said: “There is a lot of concern about the financial slowdown in the USA and UK. People are still talking a lot about the foreign exchange impact on the rupee and how that is affecting business models. There is a lot of talk at the conference this year on how some of the ease of doing business in the past is being disturbed by some of these external shocks.” Following on from these concerns, he listed some opportunities that in his view are not being discussed enough: “I would challenge a lot of these concerns though, because for this industry I don’t think those problems are so deep. I think that in fact, the real discussion here is more about the next set of growth opportunities. Knowledge Process Outsourcing for example. KPO is not new, but we are now seeing real case studies coming through, rather than just talk. I think there is a lot of discussion about where captives are going to go. Some of the captives in India are bigger than some service providers. The domestic Indian market is also rising up the agenda and so the main question is really, where is the balance going to be struck between any potential slowdown and all of these different opportunities for growth?”

Paul had summarised the issues in a very succinct way. Of course, the main thing worrying everyone has been the general economic slowdown in the west, along with the more immediate concern of margins being eroded by the rupee / dollar rate, but amongst the doom and gloom there are immense opportunities and Paul listed just a few areas that all have phenomenal potential to lift the industry further.

Paul added a final note: “We are seeing the entire offshore outsourcing industry move from an era of hyper-growth and into maturity. This leads to the kind of things that you might expect in a mature industry, such as market consolidation and more power being in the hands of the buyer. We will look back on this era in a few years from now more as one of achieving maturity rather than anything else.”

I’ve spoken to a lot of people about what is really going on at NASSCOM this year, but I think Paul hit the nail right on the head so it was really useful to just have a cup of tea and a quick talk to him.

Bernard O’Driscoll was previously the Group HR Services Director for Lloyds TSB, a role he left at the end of 2007. He spoke to me this week, obviously in a personal capacity, though our discussion is infused with insights based on his experience of working at such a senior level within one of Britain’s leading banks.

I first wanted to understand what has made O’Driscoll explore offshoring as a business model, what were the main drivers that really interested him? He explained: “The real drivers for me were around functional transformation. We had really made the most of the shared services HR team we had created in the UK so the only place we could go in terms of creating a step change in service and a new economic model would be to see if there could be good offshore delivery of HR.”

This is an interesting statement, because what O’Driscoll reveals is that he had already explored the shared services model locally. He had worked on improving business processes and efficiencies and so he was already quite far ahead of most managers when they start exploring the idea of offshoring.

“We were one of the early adopters of a shared services operation, so we had already set up quite a mature operational relationship in areas such as flexible benefits and payroll. We had a range of suppliers working with us in delivering the shared service centre, so we knew about outsourcing but offshoring was new territory” he said. Elaborating further O’Driscoll adds: “Offshoring was a new idea for HR but was not really new for the business itself. There were elements of work where the business use offshoring with regards to business process improvement – all we asked ourselves at the time was whether offshoring could take our HR processes a stage further.”

Of course there were a number of reasons why O’Driscoll became such a strong supporter of the offshore model, but the driving theme as he explains his objectives is one of partnership: “There were three really major reasons for doing it. Our belief that in finding the right partner we could extend our service capabilities, because of the expertise and hunger in the partner, plus the global time differences allowing more flexibility. Secondly, the economics made sense compared to what we could achieve locally to improve services and the third element was that we saw the step change to our service model complementing a more general change in the company. It was an exciting and ambitious direction to go, but it was all part of a broad strategy to improve our HR policies and upskill the UK based HR team to beef up and refocus the core HR delivery for the entire business.”

So, offshoring can be considered as just one component of improving the service delivery for the end user, the employee who wants to contact HR about their holiday, or tax, or gym membership. It’s clear that as part of an overall strategy for HR delivery, O’Driscoll sees a clear advantage in using some offshore partnerships but what lessons did he learn along the way? “Certainly, a key lesson is that we proved by doing it that these services can be delivered. The quality and capabilities have been proven and have shown through with time. We were really breaking new ground and trusting our convictions, but it has been shown that the fundamentals of what we wanted to do have worked. In addition, the commercial requirements have been met and, obviously, this is important for any business, so we did achieve what we had proposed in the business case. It’s important to realise that when you are looking at what many people talk of as ‘cost savings’, these should really be seen as the cost of change. You do make savings overall but this is needed to finance the whole process of changing your delivery model.”

O’Driscoll is in fact very philosophical about the function of HR, in much the same way as many IT managers have acknowledged that they play a support role to the main function of the business. He said: “You need to ask what HR means in a business. What are the really critical edges that a good HR function can give to a business? Like any other function within a business the business should shape that service. With the global sourcing phenomenon, business executives can exercise a lot more flexibility as to what they want to retain and what can be sourced from elsewhere.

I was keen to ask O’Driscoll about his views on India in general though, because I had heard it mentioned that he once introduced a lecture to other HR executives with the words “One visit to India is worth a thousand PowerPoint slides...”

Of course, he did not disappoint: “Although you hear about the capabilities in India and the hunger for excellence, you can’t appreciate it until you see it. There is an appetite to take on service delivery that is really hard to explain to anyone unless they have seen it for themselves. Business is about people and partnerships are about working with people. You need to go and see it, you shouldn’t form opinions just by reading a consultant’s report. India can’t be bottled up and placed on a PowerPoint slide.”

O’Driscoll is a keen supporter of India, but more generally he likes to keep an open mind about where and when business is conducted. The world is a smaller place today and it’s possible to engage with firms scattered across the globe. He said: “I think that if you are not really engaging in the strategic debate of global business then you could easily only be focused on cost reductions. Of course, commercial value is always important, but what really matters is whether we can make our business better by engaging with partners elsewhere. In addition, generational change is important, just look at the gap-year market. People are entering the workforce now when they have been around the world physically and virtually by the time they are 20! I think we will have to accept the implications and emotions around this reality.”

O’Driscoll reduces the question to a simple mantra “how can we do our business better?” He considers many of the issues of offshoring today, but more importantly he has started asking whether offshoring is really an issue for future generations. If you just graduated then you probably cannot remember a time without the Internet, without a mobile phone, and without access to anyone anywhere in the world. It’s likely that many of our fears around global services are going to evaporate when this new generation establishes their place in the major corporations of tomorrow, and their HR demands are going to be a lot more than just booking holidays or checking on tax bills.

I’ve noticed a bit of a trend on this blog, started off by one Hilary Robertson – getting song titles in each blog post. Well, here is another for you; heaven knows I’m miserable now. The reason being that I went to a talk by the CIO of Toyota Financial Services, Shaun Coyne. I had my laptop open and I was furiously making notes, but when I had a look later to write up my blog, all my notes had gone. The file just had Shaun’s name at the top, as if I had never written anything at all. That’s a pain. Good thing I am actually recording most of the people I am talking to straight into Garageband so I can mix Podcasts together if anyone gives me a particularly good series of comments.

I was talking to a reporter from the French press agency AFP yesterday and she told me that she can’t write notes at all anymore. She can only type into her laptop, because her hand wilts after half a page of writing. I feel the same. How I ever managed to sit through 3-hour exams at school, writing existential dirge about Lady Macbeth and her visions, I just don’t know.

Still, that’s probably the worst thing to happen today. The rest of it was pretty good – less like Lou Reed and more like MIA. The NASSCOM conference is packed full of activities so it is a very busy experience, but it’s also fun and there are old friends lurking around every corridor in the hotel.

Last night finished in a grand awards ceremony. NASSCOM gives these awards each year to luminaries around the world who have helped the Indian IT industry in some way over the past year. This year the honoured include Willie Walsh of British Airways, John Chambers of Cisco, and Ratan Tata of the Tata group. Incidentally, I was in Paris recently paying homage to the grave of Oscar Wilde and I noticed a very grand Tata family grave close by to Wilde’s lipstick-covered monument.

The awards took place in the gardens of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Mumbai, which is the venue for the conference. The location was just superb. One thing about Mumbai in February is that you can rely on it to never rain, so these grand dinners for a couple of thousand people can be planned outside with no cover. Try doing that back in London – even in the middle of summer! It was a shame that very few of the people who actually won awards could show up in person, though Paul Coby who runs technology for British Airways did speak on behalf of Willie Walsh and was a good replacement as Paul is always an impressive speaker.

February 14, 2008

Well, thank goodness the temperature has improved in Mumbai, it was only 9C last week. The sun is shining and there are some 1500 delegates here and loads of business cards are exchanged every minute.

Yesterday I had a chance to catch up with Saurabh Srivastava, founder of IIS Infotech (which became Xansa India) as well as NASSCOM itself! His big tip is that retirement is great. He is chair of the NASSCOM Foundation. It was set up to focus locally, so that the IT/ITES companies have a local impact.

Some interesting facts from his talk:

The industry generates $40bn in export earnings for India

10 million people are employed making the sector the largest organised employer in the Indian private sector

By 2010, 45% of the industry will be women

68% of the NASSCOM companies offer staff scholarships to further educate their people

And 85% of them have socially relevant initiatives.

Saurabh was on stage with Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, probably the best loved former president of India. As a technologist first, he laid down the challenge that India must move from being a Software Powerhouse to a Knowledge System Powerhouse.

He covered all the hot topics of the event, from the need for a global approach to outsourcing, sharing innovation to using the best leaders and high quality standards.

A new fact for me was that in India/IT one person generates from $32 to 82K but in manufacturing, one worker produces about $200,000. So, you can see his challenge to India IT leaders, growth cannot remain linear only.

Several of our largest clients' CIO's are here, Lloyds TSB and Barclays Bank. Sandeep Chouhan (Barclay's) shared a round table with the CTO from British Petroleum. We often forget the size of that giant, his facts blew me away. But what was fascinating was to learn about how they source for Innovation vs sourcing for service. Wow! BP expects to make successful new companies out of those they source for innovation.

One of the CIO's from the States talked about growing opportunities for offshore service providers. Not only are the baby boomers retiring, but predictions are that the number of IT jobs is higher now than during the DOT.COM boom! There will be a 20 to 40% shortage of IT skills in the USA. Gess I need to re-learn Cobol...

Finally we were all in Track C at 11.30 as noted CIO's talked about their lessons learned from M&A. Without a doubt, Francois was the best. He spoke about involving the top customers (ensure they believe in the deal), only doing deals that transform, adding muscle not just fat and the need to execute the plan rapidly. For me, his best point was the need to stay a learning organisation, to find the best practise in both companies rapidly. Click here for more on Francois' presentation and pictures.

My final note from today was probably the one about what makes multi-sourcing work for clients, learning to trust their partners. And, trust is the one thing that cannot be negotiated.

It's the awards dinner tonight so will pass on the menu in my blog tomorrow.

I arrived at Mumbai last night after spending a few days in the Philippines as a guest of the Department of Trade and Industry over there. Just before I left Manila I managed to Skype Olivier Vallet, the COO of Steria to ask a few questions about the use of a global delivery model (GDM) within Steria and within the industry generally. Obviously my interest has been stimulated by trying to learn more about the integration of Xansa into the Steria family, but in the wider sense I wanted to understand what Olivier feels about the use of a GDM – something most service companies are now talking about a great deal, even to the extent of sometimes applying a trademark to their own particular version of global delivery!

Oliver explained to me: “There are many challenges as well as opportunities with global delivery. The challenge is around the ability to leverage all of your decentralised platforms and resources, but to maintain a strong relationship with your customer – which is essential. It is a business model that should allow you to remain close to and improve relationships with customers, but taking advantage of the flexibility and skills elsewhere.”

Vallet stressed that Steria believes in a holistic delivery approach. He doesn’t define delivery to customers as onshore or offshore; it’s all just delivery. He said: “We are able to deliver on a customer site, nearshore in Europe, and from more remote locations such as India. It’s about the overall package of service delivery and not just about nearshore or offshore cost arbitrage.” Vallet stressed this point further: “For Steria, the nearshore and offshore delivery platform is not just a way of looking at India as a low-cost delivery centre. We feel that our own resources in India have skills that can be developed into real solutions that can be delivered to customers across Europe – they have some different skills that can improve our overall service offering.”

And as a final comment on the topic, Vallet reminded me that Steria recently opened a delivery centre in eastern Europe: “Steria has had a facility in Poland since October 2007 and we opened that centre mainly for the ability to offer more localised skills and services, such as local language support for customers close to the delivery centre.”

Vallet remains clear that the objective of Steria is to blend local onsite delivery with the skills that can be offered from centres in locations such as Poland and India. I think the critical point that came through in our conversation is that Steria sees delivery as delivery, without the nuances of treating onshore or offshore differently. This completely blended model is surely a true global delivery model, though Vallet probably would not want to compare his own holistic approach to that of some pure-play offshore suppliers. But his approach seems correct; if it works for the customer then it works for everyone.